This Week in Defense News is dedicating this week’s entire show to Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter. Carter discusses the US military relief effort in the Philippines, plus what programs he expects to survive DoD budget cuts and lessons learned from his time at the Pentagon. You can watch the program in it’s entirety this…

On July 23, 1993, Lt. Col. Sarah Deal (later Burrow) became the first female Marine selected for naval aviation training, thus becoming the first female Marine Aviator. For more on Lt. Col. Burrow’s story click here.

On July 16, 1945, the first atom bomb was tested near Alamogordo, NM. Trinity, the code name for the test, was a product of the Manhattan Project. Some time afterwards, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so called “father of the atomic bomb”, described the first detonation of an atomic weapon by quoting the hindu scripture, Bhagavad…

US Army Lt. Zebulon Montgomery Pike began an expedition from Fort Belle Fontaine near St. Louis to explore the West. Lt. Pike set out with 23 men to reconnoiter the Spanish borderlands. At about the same time Lewis and Clark were heading back from their Pacific venture. This was Pike’s second expedition, his first…

On July 12, 1990, Commander Rosemary B. Mariner becomes the first woman to command an operational aviation squadron, Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 34 (VAQ-34). Mariner was one of the first women to become qualified as a Naval Aviator in 1974 and one of the first women to fly light attack aircraft. Mariner attained the rank of…

On July 8, 1959, the first American combat casualties of the War in Vietnam occurred when a guerrilla strike hit a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) compound in Bien Hoa, 20 miles northeast of Saigon. Army Maj. Dale R. Buis and Army Master Sgt. Chester M. Ovnand were killed in the ambush, apparently watching the…

On July 3, 1950 the first carrier air strikes of the Korean War are carried out by planes from the USS Valley Forge (CV-45) and HMS Triumph. VF-51 aircraft from the Valley Forge shot down two North Korean aircraft. The air strikes are also the first combat test of the F9F Panther and AD Skyraider.

On July 2, 1926, the US Army Air Corps was created. This was one step in the long fight to create a separate force for air power within the Department of Defense. The Army Air Corps merged into the Air Force when it was created in 1947. But, the period between 1926 -1947 the Air Corps…